


Faces of Life

by matrixrefugee



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 05:04:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17892026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Death takes on different forms over different eras, when she visits the living...





	Faces of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for "fic_promptly"'s [Sandman, Death, five forms she has taken](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/70207.html?thread=3498559&format=light#cmt3498559)

The first form she took on Earth was as a protozoan in the earliest sea, a warm bath of fluid just starting to turn to salt. She swam among the rest of the single-celled creatures about her, watching them feed and subdivide, producing more of themselves, which in turn were eaten by other larger creatures. She even fed on a smaller microbe, experiencing its taste and the feeling of life feeding life.

The second form she took was a sentient one, an early hominid in a colony living on what their descendants would call the African Horn. She watched as they dug a pit for one of their elders who had died, placing a spear and a necklace of lion claws into the pit with him, the first burial.

The third form she took was a bar maid in Athens, pouring cups of wine for the philosophers gathered, debating the meaning of death and whether or not the Elysian Fields were simply a hopeful thought at the end of ones existence, or if death was the beginning of a new existence.

The fourth form was a Heian court lady, looking at the leaves on the maples that surrounded a temple in Minako, which some would call Kyoto one day in the future. A courtier wrote a poem about her gazing at the trees, her pale face contrasted with the flaming leaves.

The fifth form was an engineer on a generational space ship flying out to the stars, leaving behind a dying planet with its resources used up and heading out to bring life anew to a new planet out there in the glowing darkness.


End file.
